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Pope Benedict has an excellent discourse on consumers moral accountability- but...
Thank you Jesus for KIA - The
new consumer moral ethics in the global economic arena
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Many say that it is only human nature to
buy something for the cheapest price without any reflection how the cheap price was possible. Every buy sets up a chain
of events good or bad. These events lead back to your own doorstep. 20 cents an hour workers do not make enough to even
buy the things they make let alone have anything left over to buy what the more prosperous nations have left to sell.
And in the more prosperous nations, the new created working poor classes can no longer afford to buy even the cheaper imports.
It is a no win situation up and down the line.
Pope Benedict Encyclical points to this problem. Every single purchase
carries a moral balance. Actually consumers are powerful in provoking change for the better across the board. I grew
up in a family food store and President Roosevelt created what I call a "lost leader" economy when he established
ceiling prices during World War 2. This prompted a massive reaction of economic forces that manipulated
markets by selling something under costs. Businesses found that they could draw a mass of customers this way to put
out all competitors that could not afford to sell under costs for a long period. In our
store, the women would stop by our store after coming home from church to buy only the lost leader items we had on our
window signs and nothing else. It would add up to our losing about a $1 on each $10 in sales. I asked my father
how this new economy was supposed to work and he said it was the new economy to draw more volume on all
the other goods. It did not. Up to that time we were competitive with the chain stores - our gross
profit was about 27 percent and our operating costs added up to about 7 percent. The new super markets came and
enjoyed a higher gross profit of about 35 percent with an operating costs more than 20 percent but they won and we lost our
business that lasted more than fourty years. Later on I lost a job and also lost a business due to competitiors
selling under costs to capture market share. The victory went to the business entity that had the
most cash flow to outlast those who didn't. The very same company who cost me by job later merged
with the company that ran me out of my business only to be hit by a larger company who put them out by doing the same
thing.
Today the same things apply with dirty money also washed by regular companies in the global economic
arena. Others sell under costs to grow a volume of cash so they can invest the money by the day for
profits rather than making the profits on the goods they sell. This was one of the direct causes for our economic crisis
that no one talks about..
Today, reportedly, companies like Nike could provide a living wage to
thousands of their workers in places like Malaysia if they only transferred 3 percent of their advertising budget for this
purpose. As fans we watch super stars like Lebron James and Tiger Woods making millions by promoting the Nike logo
and goods at the expense of a vast impoverished working class.
In the auto industry all kinds of
money games and foreign government subsidies control markets while millions lose their jobs. The first U.S.
stimulus packages in the auto markets went to foreign auto assemblers. More than a billion dollars was paid out to these
companies to build their plants in particular states in the U.S. These plants are only assembly plants and the term
made in American was changed to built in America. The parts come from the wage slave labor markets of the world
The State of Indiana paid Honda about 160 million dollars to build an assembly plant in their state to employ 5,000
workers at about one half of what the original auto workers made. At the same time, more than 20,000 auto parts workers
in Indiana lost their jobs due to the imports of wage slave labor making the parts outside the USA.
Now
foreign auto assemblers like KIA receive millions of dollars to build their plants in the USA. In West Point,
Georgia, the town has erected a banner sign saying Thank You Jesus for KIA. This is the state of our consumer ethics
in the USA these days as we have suffered the most massive dislocation of jobs in our history.
One
of the first stimulus package went to a foreign nation. Soon after President Clinton pushed the passage of NAFTA
through Congress in 1994, he had to rush billions of dollars to Mexico to save the peso and bail out
the Mexican economy - and to stop a domino affect in the international money markets.
Unfortunately, none of this
translates to any direct discourse in Pope Benedict's Encyclical.
And we all know what Jesus did
with the money changers in the temple.
Our economies based on making money on money instead of making
things are burning out. It is not a Chinese puzzle to solve. Rome found out too late.
| American Dream is Burning away |
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| across the globe - ( artwork by Ray Tapajna ) |
We need to just get back to the basics and apply the Biblical
adage - Do unto others as you would have them do to you. The theological discussions about the phenomenon
of globalization and free trade would be much more of simple task. And the lack of philosophy in our times
would be overcome to a great degree.
The problem
with globalization is a problem with human nature. Many say it is only human nature to seek the cheapest price possible without
considering the conditions behind the price.
Behind the cheaper prices are dark stories of suffering and impoverished
workers making our goods for us. In the more prosperous nations, the value of workers and labor has been deflated while the
stock markets call it an increase in production. Stock values rise as workers get fired instead of hired. New working poor
classes have been created in the process. In the less prosperous nations, impoverished workers make things that they themselves
can not afford to buy.
In other areas, we had a President of a Jesuit University complaining how the payroll tax cuts
out a large percentage of students in the work study programs. He ignored the fact that the payroll tax is also an overhead
cost for everything made in the USA and we globalization and free trade are the tools for companies to evade this costly overhead
of about 15 percent just by moving their production outside the USA.
Then we have shoppers shopping their way out of
their jobs in the process at places like Walmart which is the grand distributor of products made by the impoverished workers
and even child labor.
We then have some say that the children in places like India can at least make a bit of money
to help their families survive.
The first order of business is to ask this question : Is it only human nature to shop
for the cheapest price no matter what? Behind that answer lies the practical solution - Do unto others as you would have them
do to you.
Apply this and all the deep theological discussions will be needless. Globalization and free trade are not
phenomenons. And we do not need any conspiracy theories to know the process has been driven by powerful forces knowing what
they are doing. They found out what they could do with the consumer mentality and make money using flawed human nature
in endless ways.
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The Bewildered New World hears from the Pope. It may be too little and too late.
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Tapsearcher finds:
Laurie Goodstein and Rachel Dunadio from the New
York Times reported the issuing of Pope Benedict economic encyclical was delayed due to the economic crisis. We explored
the latent response of religion and philsophy to the global economic arena at http://www.therationale.com Religion has trailed economic events for a long time instead of making a stand. Newsweek/Washington
Post published a review by Father Thomas J Reese SJ at Georgetown University and some who responded to the article wondered
why Father Reese did not say more about what he thought about it and just repeated sections from it .
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